Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts has become one of 21 Catholic colleges across the country to shut its doors, merge with another institution, or announce plans to do so since 2016. Besides fidelity to Catholic teaching, colleges in the Northeast face an additional demographic challenge in that most U.S. population growth is in the South and West. As one analyst puts it, “Starved of students and the tuition revenue they bring, small private colleges in New England have begun to blink off the map.”